Saturday February 17th 2024 - Clark's Reservation State Park - Jamesville NY (Syracuse) - 3.5 miles, 300 feet elevation gain

We were at this surprisingly impressive state park just minutes from Syracuse once before back in October 2022.  It snowed lightly most of last night and daytime temps remained well below freezing so this was a great chance to walk on some nice fresh clean snow.  The drive to Syracuse went well and while there was blowing snow in spots, it was pretty early and traffic volume was very light.  

 There were only about 4 cars in the large main parking log.  We headed off in the opposite direction from our previous trip which meant going through the woods and valleys first rather than starting off along the bluff above the lake. We also TRIED to walk around the lake this time, something we didn't attempt the other time we were here.  

Other than the Lake trail, everything was in great shape and very easy to walk along.  The Lake trail was intimidating from the moment it left the other trail we had been on. It clung to the side of a hill with a very narrow indistinct (in the snow at least) foot patch that descended steeply to water level.  Then it went RIGHT to the edge of the frozen water.  Then sometimes seemingly randomly up a scramble of rocks and dirt for a bit then back to the water.  Every time it went from being a shore line trail to being a slightly elevated trail it was treacherous and it went up and down many times.  When we got about half way across the lake we got to a spot where we couldn't see the next blaze and neither the faint looking maybe a trail maybe not thing that went steeply up nor the waterline route looked good at all. So we turned around, braving some of the same hazards on the way back to the junction but choosing in some spots to NOT climb up the side of the hill when it turned out we didn't need to.  I think the lake is quite high right now which contributed to the challenging conditions but it's also clear that the Lake trail isn't remotely as developed as the rest of the named trails.  The plot of our walk makes it easy to see what we did.

After we backtracked from the lake, we were on the Cliff trail which took us directly above (way above) the Lake trail basically following the same path but on top of the hill above the lake.  There were some cool boulders that had broken up into random shaped smaller boulders, something we see in several other places in New York, most prominently in Rock City.  Soon we were back at the car having made an interesting loop with a ton of different types of snowy scenery and some very challenging maneuvers along the Lake trail.

The snow was really coming down AND blowing on the way home, especially the first 15 miles which was mostly I-81 and I-690.  There were some clumps of nervous people driving slowly with flashers on but for the most part they stayed to the right.  In the Subaru with the impressive Cross Climate 2 tires, I alternated between the middle lane and left lane to maintain a brisk but hopefully sensible pace. There were 2 or 3 places where a car had gone off the road or broken down and one was on the transition ramp between I-690 and I-90. If they couldn't safely navigate the 35 MPH ramps connecting 2 major roads I don't know what business they thought they had getting on the expressways.  None of the little incidents had any meaningful impact on traffic.  People were very good at going around the recovery vehicles and not rubbernecking.  Pretty much every time I've driven in poor weather here in Western NY it's been pretty impressive.  The people who don't like driving in the snow mostly stay close to home and those that go out seem prepared for and adept at dealing with the realities of winter weather.

I worked early this morning helping my colleagues in Japan and Brian works at Target tonight so getting in a moderate hike with an hour 15 minute drive each way was pretty impressive.